Well, we’re whip­ping right along here! Two more arti­cles in this series, and then we shall see where we go from here. Now is a good time to drop me an e-mail or leave a com­ment on the BLOG, and let me know if you have top­ics you’d like to see.

Any­way, today we’re at Chakra 6, located between the eye­brows, at the spot com­monly called the Third Eye. Being of a prac­ti­cal sort, I’m not much into woo woo, New Age sort of stuff around what might be thought of as “psy­chic phe­nom­ena,” which often gets con­nected to this Chakra. I’m going to skip the “Read your auras, talk to your dead grand­mother” stuff for oth­ers, sim­ply because I’m not interested.

As many of you know, Dar­bella and I have been work­ing on a new Web­site, and it’s going to be done soon! It will be a mem­ber­ship site, teach­ing Med­i­ta­tion, Qi Gong, Breath­work, Stretch­ing, and Zen Liv­ing. The whole thing is video based.

I did a video called, “Increas­ing Insight,” and I decided to include it here, sort of as a teaser for the new site, and because it addresses the 6^th Chakra.

If you’re read­ing this arti­cle in an e-mail, or likely through a feed reader, you’ll likely need to go to the BLOG itself to watch. You can click here.

Any­way, whether you watched or not, I’d like to sug­gest that the 6^th Chakra moves us even fur­ther along the devel­op­men­tal curve—past the phys­i­cal as rep­re­sented by secu­rity, rela­tion­ships, and self-knowing, (Chakras 1 — 3) through to com­pas­sion and voca­tion, (Chakra 4) and to the power of expres­sion (Chakra 5).

The 6^th moves us into the inter­face between what we can know through evi­dence, and what we know intu­itively, or through insight.

And out­sight (my new word from the video.)

Insight and out­sight have to do with “feel­ing our way” through mate­r­ial that has lit­tle to do with black and white think­ing. We might call this feel­ing a “felt sense.” It’s some­times a voice, some­times a pic­ture or movie (the 6^th Chakra has as it‘s organs the brain, neu­ro­log­i­cal sys­tem, eyes, ears, nose, pitu­itary, pineal glands.)

Insight

Insight is all about learn­ing about your­self, at a deep level. And the most impor­tant learn­ing is to stop defend­ing yourself.

Specif­i­cally, stop defend­ing what isn’t working.

Part of the “game” is to iden­tify the “voices in our heads.” Our upbring­ing has embed­ded in us what might be thought of as the “par­ent voice.” This voice is also called the ego voice, and there was more on this in the Heart Chakra arti­cle 2 weeks ago.

This parental voice typ­i­cally has two flavours of message:

1) You screwed up again! and

2) If only you’d try harder, you could be perfect.

These mes­sages repeat end­lessly, and all that changes are the details—the topic, the sit­u­a­tion or per­son, etc.

Another flavour of this voice is the critic

This is the voice of blame that finger-points it’s way through life. There are two tones:

1) the shrill ver­sion, “You are such a loser! If it wasn’t for you, I’d be happy!” and

2) the melan­choly ver­sion, “Sigh. I’m so unhappy with you right now. My whole life has been a fruit­less, sad and empty search for some­one who would do things my way, out of love.”

Insight is another voice altogether

This is the voice that blames no one– not self, not other. This voice “sees clearly,” and pro­poses solu­tions. And what sets this insight voice apart is that the solu­tion is some­thing you can do dif­fer­ently, right now. Or, it’s a sug­ges­tion for how to state what is going on, right now. Insight has absolutely noth­ing invested in being right, in blam­ing, or in clinging.

Thus, Insight is Non-attached

Non-attachment is the abil­ity to let what is be what is, to expe­ri­ence it fully and deeply, and to let it go. It’s not try­ing to hold on to any­thing — to peo­ple, to sit­u­a­tions, to feel­ings. It’s moment-by-moment awareness.

If you’re inter­ested in learn­ing how to cre­ate and imple­ment the voice of Insight (I call this voice “The Watcher…”) down­load my free book­let, called, wait for it… “The Watcher!”

Out­sight

OK, weird word. But what I’m try­ing to get across is that the sec­ond part of our job, at Chakra 6, is to fig­ure out the world. I know. It sounds like I’m con­tra­dict­ing myself. But notice: I did not say “judge the world.”

Fig­ur­ing out the world is to stop being naïve, to stop stomp­ing our feet, and to see that “the world as it is, is the world as it is.” The gift of out­sight is the gift of prac­ti­cal aware­ness. “This is how it is, until it isn’t.”

Now, this is not about giv­ing your bless­ing to the crap going on. It’s acknowl­edg­ing, first of all, that crap exists, and then, doing some­thing about it by chan­ing the only thing you can—what you are doing ! This takes us back to Chakra 5.

In a more per­sonal way, the same thing applies to deal­ing with one’s sig­nif­i­cant other. I want to be per­fectly aware that my part­ner is my part­ner. Out­sight allows me to see my part­ner clearly, non-judgementally, with­out attach­ment to chang­ing or fix­ing. See­ing clearly means that I not only have a clear view of what is going on, but have curios­ity rather than try­ing to “make it all bet­ter” by chang­ing the other person.

Insight and Outsight

Both are about see­ing clearly. Know­ing both who I am and how the world works. Moment by moment, I gain knowl­edge about self and other, from a place of wis­dom. Wis­dom helps me to be present with what is, to stop wast­ing time try­ing to force change, and to care­fully and clearly choose what I will do next.

This week, notice what lies beneath what you see

Notice the sto­ries that first pop into your head—the ones about blame and force, and coer­cion, the ones about how badly you’ve been treated. Take a step back, and look clearly. See how things are unfold­ing, and see if you can find an alter­na­tive that helps you to be more direct, yet com­pas­sion­ate in your response.

Next week, we con­clude this series with the Crown Chakra.